What is Your Name?

You will not believe how difficult it is to live up to certain names -- especially when you do not associate yourself with the characteristics of the meaning of your name. I have a valley of wavey tresses, and am happily Kuntala, as is Jayasri, my aunt -- Goddess of Triumph -- she even walked the Lakme ramp last evening and completely killed it. The name Neil may have zero meaning, but it has a zing of charisma, even in the way it is spelled, and so was he...

We are privileged to be able to smile when people ask after our names. I knew a certain Rupasree, and I do not intend to belittle her looks in any way, but the pain she went through, each time she had to pronounce her name, with that distinctly displeasing face, was visible from miles. So suffered the friends who had sur/names akin to celebrities: Lata, and not be able to sing; Sachin and have no relationship with cricket and Kapoor, neither with a business sensibility nor with enviable curves. Some are tired having to call out their own names with the volume of commonness attached -- Debashish, Debalina and Sharmistha. While some others are laughed at because of an unbearable reality their parents had named them with (mostly found in Bengali) -- Zidane and Marx. Blessed are those with a touch of the unusual or beautiful in their names: Basudha, Basabi and Manjima. The novelty in these cases wins. Though the last one being a soulful feminist, faces my daily joke -- "You have a 'Man' in your name!" 

What do you think Monalisa does? She is disappointed when she cannot comprehend certain words of my writing, and certain ways of her life. She complains to some she can open her heart to, and perhaps has no idea that her etymology sits in the Louvre, sighing at each shutterbug. She outlives the mystery of her smile. Many a times surely the smiles must have faded, it is the law of nature, erm, colours. And many more times she has been touched up to become as good as new. Nobody really notices the difference, year after year after year. She waits at her admirers tirelessly, she takes in the anger of her critics, she looks after and upon generations. Who knows with or without interest?

And Monalisa smiles.